Corporate values : a centre of gravity in turbulent environments?

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the practical value of 'corporate values' in strategic management theories relating to sectors of business with changing environments. Using representative firms of five business sectors, we quantify and analyse the market's opinion of their publicly stated strategy across four key dimensions and show that it is possible to account for turbulence in industry effects, by examining the differing utility of their corporate values for consumers, customers and clients. We conclude that certain business sectors are indeed vulnerable to customer perceptions of turbulence of different types, and whilst central and resident in all large businesses, we contend that corporate values are more apparent and relevant to customers and clients of the firms in discontinuous and turbulent market environments, or those in punctuated equilibriums, than those in incrementally changing environments.